The periwinkle rarely drops the precious gems until it is cracked. For years, China has possessed latent capabilities in the semiconductor industry. But magically, to unlock those abilities, US sanctions were needed. So, when the sanctions came, China abandoned US chips and looked inwards.
Today, it is having a moment: “In the wake of US trade restrictions on advanced chip-making equipment, China’s integrated circuit (IC) output witnessed a remarkable surge of 40% to 98.1 billion units in the first quarter of the year, per SCMP.”
When I wrote my book – Nanotechnology and Microelectronics: Global Diffusion, Economics and Policy – which won the IGI Global 2010 Book of the Year award, the ingredients of greatness were visible in China. The United States used sanctions to move China years ahead, and today, those sanctions have created immense competitions for American companies.
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You can ask Apple: “The new Pura 70 series offers four phones at price points similar to the iPhone’s, and it’s presumed to run on an advanced, China-made chip, though Huawei has not revealed that information. The company’s smartphone shipments in China jumped 64% year over year in the first six weeks of 2024, per Counterpoint Research; iPhone sales dropped 24% over that same period.”
Due to those chips, very soon Apple will become history in China, and you can add Tesla, and many other US companies. Semiconductor sanctions woke a sleeping dragon, and now it is devouring everything on the path. Do not find ways to motivate your enemies.
The periwinkle rarely drops the precious gems until it is cracked. For years, China has possessed latent capabilities in the semiconductor industry. But magically, to unlock those abilities, US sanctions were needed. So, when the sanctions came, China abandoned US chips and… pic.twitter.com/N7HWl0mdKB
— Ndubuisi Ekekwe (@ndekekwe) April 18, 2024
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When the history of collapsed and forgotten US tech behemoths will be written, will historians remember that politics and not innovation did the greatest damage? It’s good to witness what is currently happening, for those capable of learning.
What do we need in our part of the world to finally wake up? If you hammer sanctions here, rather than waking up, our smartest people will relocate to go join the guys that sanctioned their countries. But we will be here writing and analyzing how the US accelerated China’s capabilities across diverse sectors, without ever drawing the right lessons.
When will Africans finally learn that all the geopolitical and economic fights they read about other nations are indirectly teaching them what to focus on? This appears to be the only continent where education has failed to liberate minds.
Mother Africa, may your over 1.4 billion children never end up as monumental failure to their future generations.